Eco-Fast fashion…spider silk the new polyester?
Spiders becoming our new best- friend :0
Sustainable fast fashion!? Sounds pretty far fetched, right? I’m sure many of us have heard the tons and tons of created waste by the fast fashion industry. Up to 100 billion garments are produced by this industry per year. 92 million end up in landfills, only about 1% is reused or recycled. To keep feeding peoples fast fashion hunger, what must change to keep the people happy and our planet?
How is a single t-shirt made?
The most popular and universal garment of clothing today is a t-shirt. Most t-shirts are made of cotton and/or polyester.
Lets start off with the cotton farm. Conventional cotton farming often relies on the use of pesticides and herbicides to protect the crops. These chemicals contaminate about everything around them. From water pollution to the soil and even harming non-target species including the farmers.
One t- shirt needs about 2,700 L of water — thats about 30 filled up bathtubs or enough water for one person to drink for 900 days. Yea, sure we have plenty of water on our planet but in reality 97% of it is salt water, 2% in ice or snow, and less than 1% is the water we all have access to; and 70% of that goes to growing crops and these cotton plants get very thirsty.
Synthetic fabrics like polyester are made from petroleum, a non-renewable chemical that contributes about 14% of all greenhouse gas emissions; from the extracting and processing of crude oil and natural gas.
Next, is the processing, raw cotton must be ginned to separate the fibers from the seeds using chemicals. Cotton fibers or polyester are spun into yarn then huge high tech knitting machines weave these into pieces of fabric whilst being sprayed with heat and chemicals till they’re white and soft. At that point, the fabric is dipped into, guess what… more chemicals like commercial bleach and azo dyes for vivid coloring. These contain lead, chromium, and mercury, cancer causing elements. Later, they get cut, sewn, and printed, often generating more waste due to defective and mis- printed items. This is when they reach you, the consumer, for use and disposal.
The fashion industry has led to be the 2nd largest polluter in the world after oil.
How can we stop being the problem and be the solution? There are many ways contribute less waste, like shopping second hand, looking for textiles made of recycled materials and when its just not your style anymore donate, recycle, or reuse them as cleaning rags.
Well this isn’t an article creating an attempt to end your fast fashion addiction but one about a way to create a new, environmentally friendly industry. How? The answer is around us, found in nature; biomimicry.
What is biomimicry?
Well most of us know that bio means: “life” or “living things” and mimicry means: “imitation” or “to imitate”.
Biomimicry involves studying and analyzing forms and structures found in nature and applying them to human made products to enhance technology and/or sustainability; such as self-healing mechanisms, communication among organisms, energy conversion, or photosynthesis — solar panels were created by mimicking how plants convert energy. My favorite example, an actress/inventor named Hedy Lamarr in her time thought airplanes were too slow so she bought a “book of birds” and a “book of fish” and found the fastest fish and bird in each. She drew together her combined knowledge, and contributed to the modern airplane wings, making them faster and more reliable. An icon of a woman!
Now scientist raised the question, “how can we make fast fashion sustainable?” Looking at nature, researchers and scientist have always been fascinated by spiders silk for thousands of years. Spider silk is known for its strength, flexibility, and biodegradability. The perfect combination for clothing! Arachnophobia is #1 most common phobia that induces panic. This top feared phobia are soon becoming one of our strongest allies.
Harvesting spider silk
So, what are you thinking? A huge room full of spiders making a bunch of webs at once? Well that sounds like it could work but that would be very terrifying… spiders are known to be cannibals. Imagine an anti-social, emo teen that needs a looott of space for themselves and are deeply territorial. But instead of kicking you out of their room, they eat you. Yikes.
Spider farming is out of the picture, next best thing is to engineer it, which many scientist are doing today. Let me explain how spiders create their silk first.
Spider silk is made of connected chains of proteins called “spidroins” in a liquid crystalline solution called “dope” that give it its strength and unconnected chains that make it flexible. The dope starts as a liquid in spiders internal silk glands, once it dries, they have specialized glands in their bottom called spinnerets to produce the silk. Most spiders can create 7 different types of silk. Stronger than steel and a lot stronger than Gorilla Glue.
Replicating spidroins gets really complicated. These are very unique proteins only found in spiders. Each species of spider produces a specific combination of spidroins, resulting on diverse properties. It’s very hard to identify and reproduce these unique proteins accurately.
Production
At Kraig Biocraft Laboratories have been able to replicate spiders protein but faced two barriers, forming the proteins into silk and doing it cost effectively. Kraig created a new technology, genetically engineering spider tech into silkworms — an already commercialized producer of silk. These silkworms are perfect for the job! 40% of their weight is just silk glands. They have created approximately 20 different genetically engineers spider silk fibers. Kraig makes sure that its clear these are not synthetic silk fibers; they are made by genetically engineered silk worms — renewable and sustainable! Recently announcing that they are ready for large-scale production.
The details on how Kraig genetically modifies their silk worms is private information due to their ownership of this method. A simplified version would be that scientist identify the genes responsible for producing spidroins and insert those genes in the silkworm’s genome producing a hybrid silk that contains some elements of spider silk.
With the large scale production of spider silk so many things are possible like bridge jumper cables, biodegradable packaging, bandages, to textiles and clothing, and even bullet proof clothes!
Spiber is a Japanese company partnered with a clothing brand Goldwin. Spiber uses genetically modified bacteria. Their team starts off by taking a chunk of the gene sequence that spiders use to make spidroin; to replicate this some companies have used goats milk to clone these genes but Spiber opted for E. coli. They let the bacteria grow in a bioreactor, then they use a nifty protein purification system to clean them up and then the proteins are ready for use!
Spiber is an animal free production! They also have a closed loop system where their materials are recycled and reused. Their clothing being light weight yet strong, long lasting and biodegradable where bacteria and fungi can break down the proteins. Imagine that in our future everyday clothing!
Challenges
Sadly, everything new will always be expensive. Many companies are continuing to work on the best cost effective biotechnical process for large scale production. Mimicking spider silk perfectly even with successful companies, enhancing the strength and elasticity still remains a challenge.
Genetically engineered spider silk raises regulatory and ethical concerns ensuring safety and approval. Producers must be sure of biocompatibility with humans for clothing avoiding allergens, essential for costumer acceptance. Educating consumers about the benefits of spider silk is vital to building trust and awareness. Lack of familiarity consumers are skeptical and hesitant to adopting new tech.
Acceptance is key to this game changing tech — creating a sustainability fashion revolution with high performing clothing. Aligning with the ever growing demand of fashion and trends. Maybe once the people realize how amazing spider silk can be, arachnophobia will be 2nd on the list.
